The following abbreviations are herewith defined, at least some of which are referred to within the following description of the prior art and the present invention.    AFC Automatic Frequency Control    ATC Automatic Time Control    BA BCCH Allocation    BCCH Broadcast Control Channel    BS-PA-MFRMS Base Station Paging Multiframes    BSIC Base Station Identification Code    CCCH Common Control Channel    CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check    DRX Discontinuous Reception    E-UTRA Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access    FCCH Frequency Correction Channel    GSM Global System for Mobile Communications    HLR Home Location Register    LA Location Area    MS Mobile Station    MTC Machine Type Communication    NAS Non Access Stratum    RA Routing Area    RSSI Received Signal Strength Indicator    SCH Synchronization Channel    TSC Training Sequence Code    UTRA Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
In a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network today, each registered mobile station (MS) must monitor its own paging group on the paging channel periodically with a periodicity which varies between 0.47 and 2.12 seconds and is set by the parameter BS-PA-MFRMS (see 3GPP TS 44.018 V11.3.0 (2012-11)'s chapter 10.5.2.11—the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein). The length of the paging cycle is set to achieve a balance between the acceptable responsiveness for mobile terminated call set-up procedures and the MS battery lifetime. Today, the MS uses a significant amount of power decoding and processing received information which is not intended for it when it periodically checks for incoming paging messages and performs other idle mode activities. This leads to significant overhead which quickly drains the MS battery especially for MSs which are characterized as machine type communication (MTC) devices.